You forgot to mention the combined era of the Sox bullpen, which only had to throw 5.1 innings over three games. They gave up one run. If I'm doing my math correctly, that's about a 1.69 ERA. So, yeah, the starters sort of sucked it up at times, but despite the claims that the Yankee bullpen was better coming into the series, the Sox seemed to hold their own there.

The Sox and Yanks always play differently when they play each other. So, I expect the combined era of our three starting pitchers in this series to drop dramatically and to continue to be low in any game that is not played against the Yankees. I assume the same will be true for the Yankees' starters, for the record.

And, it doesn't really matter anyway because they kept it low enough to give the Sox a shot, even if five runs is generally not considered "low enough."

If the Yankees had won the bidding for Dice-K, and he had pitched exactly the same as he did last night, only with a Yankee win, you would say, "Well, he's still new here, and I was expecting better, but he did the job and gave the bullpen a rest" (which is pretty much where I am now--disappointed, but still optimistic). And the Yankee bullpen needs a whole lot of rest right now.

The difference in the series was that Francona trusted his starters enough to leave them out there to take a beating and limit the exposure of the bullpen. Torre had quick hooks with every starter, including Pettitte, which made no sense to me.

Torre's been doing this all year, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes to protect the starter's ego. Whatever the reason, they're in trouble.

As for Dice K, I don't care who he's pitching for, I would not be saying anything positive about that start. This was the first time the Yanks saw him, that's advantage pitcher. Especially when the pitcher has a funky delivery.

He couldn't get through the top of the Yanks order without giving up a run. More alarming is the fact that he apparently can't pitch with runners on base, which may not have been a problem facing lineups in Japan, but will be a problem here.

6 earned in 7 innings is horrible, by any standard. Schilling and Beckett weren't much better either. It was a good series for the Sox, I'm not denying that, but I wouldn't read too much into the results. This was not the Yanks A team.

One: Dice-K is used to pitching every six days, per Japan (thank you Bobby Valentine for that tidbit). So expect his arm to fall off come August.

Two: Wily Mo Pena played center last night. He is so fat. I thought that was David Ortiz at first running after a flyball. After running five steps to catch the flyball, Pena looked like he was going to pass out. Is he really a starting outfielder?